Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Is anyone reading this?

I know I don't have much exciting on this blog since it's a work assignment and I barely have time to get the work part of it posted. But I don't have any comments on it so I'm just wondering if anyone even looks at it...


Okay, I guess the answer is yes and I just missed the one comment until a few minutes ago. It's kind of cool that someone completely outside of our assignment stumbled across my blog! :-)

Week 6, Thing 13

The del.icio.us tutorial link on our 23 things page was broken. Thanks to Kevin, I was able to watch a different one and get the general concept before exploring the site. It's a good way to see what sites other people find interesting and useful. For instance, howstuffworks.com has been bookmarked by over 1,000 people. I don't think I use enough of the same websites at home or work to make it worth my time to create a list of bookmarks that I can access anywhere.

In other notes, I've actually ended up using my bloglines account several times a week, which is more than I expected.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Week 5, Thing 12 - Halfway finished...

Initially, I didn't see much use for a tool like Rollyo. Google, Yahoo or specific websites have worked fine for me. The Rollyo search I created was for country music news and concert information. I pulled in 4 or 5 sites that I frequently search for information, so now I can check just one site. I'm not sure how often I'll actually used Rollyo since I'm more comfortable with going directly to the sites, but it's a nice to know the option is there.

Here's my search roll: http://rollyo.com/akrumrine/country_newsconcerts/

Monday, July 16, 2007

Week 5, Thing 11

LibraryThing seems like a good way to keep track of books you've read. Sometimes a book looks familiar but I can't remember if I've read it or not. With this site, I could instantly have pictures of the books I've already read. I also added a "widget" to the left side of my blog that randomly shows books from my library (all YA right now). I don't know how often I'll remember to update my library but if I can keep it fairly up to date, it'll be a useful tool.

Week 5, Thing 10 - Lots of cute kittens and more!

I've had an avatar for my Yahoo account for a while, so I added that to the "my profile" space on my blog (upper left hand corner of my blog page). You can save favorite versions of your avatar (other outfits, different backgrounds, etc.) or specific favorite items in the favorites section on Yahoo so you can easily find them later.

The generator blog listed on the Thing 10 page is cool too because it lists a while lot of different types of generators available on the Internet. The "World Famous Random Kitten Generator" is by far the cutest generator I've found thus far.

Week 4, Thing 9

I checked out the MERLIN site, but didn't find anything really exciting as compared to some of the other things we've explored (maybe I just viewed it on an off day). I also tried out all 4 of the recommended feed search tools. I think if I'm searching for a feed and I'm not already on the website for the feed I want, I'll stick to the Bloglines search engine. Several of the other sites were visually very busy. Feedster and Technorati gave me way more search results than I wanted or needed and not the feed that I was looking for. This may have been a result of my unfamiliarity with using the sites. The local information on topix was interesting, but not enough so to make me want to use the site regularly. In the end I found (and subscribed to) feeds from the Baltimore Orioles, CMT (county music television), and the Discovery Channel. I think the search tools are nice if you want to see what's out there or available. However, if you have a specific site in mind, I think it's easier to go to that site and see if you can find the RSS icon.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Week 4, Thing 8 - Bloglines

After going through several of the tutorials, I decided that the bloglines thing seemed fairly straight forward and simple. I had my account set up and was subscribed to 10 feeds within 15 minutes of starting the process. I might have been able to do it faster, but I was working the desk too. I'm not really clear on why I would want to provide a public link to my RSS account, so I don't plan on doing that right now. I'm not sure how often I'll actually use the feed reader since I have to go to a site I don't normally visit to long into my reader, but it's a nice program. I set up a feed from CMT and actually found out as a result of the feed that a group that I'd like to see in concert is going to be in the area this fall.

Personally, it would be useful not to have to visit music websites and online comics and just get the page updates sent to me instead. Professionally, I think the Young Adult feed that I subscribed to will help me find out about titles that our library doesn't own or that I haven't gotten a chance to read myself.

I think libraries could utilize RSS as a marketing tool. If the library created an RSS feed that patrons could subscribe to, we could send information about new programs and other library news directly to patrons. Also, RSS feeds could help staff members stay informed about new books and authors.